The Choreography of Sasha Waltz December 8, 2007

Bodies (Körper)
Director: Jörg Jeshel, Brigitte Kramer, 60 min., 2000

The film shows the dance choreography "Körper" by Sasha Waltz, with different segments, where dancers turn their emotions inside out. The play is about the duality of competition and unity, hate and love, rejection and admirability. The dancers are sometimes presented as scientific objects, who let themselves be manipulated or they rename their body parts, therefore counter-characterise discrimination based on skin colour or race. A production that raises critical questions, also in connection with the recent German and Jewish past.

Dido & Aeneas
Director: Peter Schönhofer, 90 min., 2005

In 2005, Sasha Waltz produced Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido & Aeneas”, with 12 dancers from her ensemble and 51 musicians, chorists and soloists at the Berlin State Opera, Unter den Linden. The multi-layered emotional world of Purcell’s one and only complete opera provided the thematic starting point for the choreography. Sasha Waltz concentrated on the two main characters, the Carthaginian Queen Dido and Aeneas who fled from Troy, and their tragic love story, that ends with the death of Dido.

Official Website: http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/bag/kue/en2835095.htm